a cleansing of the cavity.

i realize that my last post may have come across as being asshole-ish, so i’d like to offer a disclaimer:

i am an asshole.

there. i feel much better now that we’ve cleared that up.

but seriously…i’m in a bit of an odd head space right now, for reasons that would take too long to explain without writing a novella. maybe some of that spilled over into music-related things needlessly. or maybe my rant was justified. i don’t feel a need to defend what i said, so much as i’d like to stress that i realize pretty much everyone flies by the seat of their pants when it comes to playing live, and that’s just the way things work. what it comes down to is that i simply can’t work that way in a live setting. i’ve been there, done that, got the t-shirt, and it doesn’t even fit. i need my ears and my brain intact, otherwise i’m just a grizzly bear with no teeth. i’m not saying i’ll never play live again (not that i ever did much of that to begin with), but when i do it’ll either be with adam/field assembly, or to play my own music, and that’ll be it. i really need to stop this occasional musical freelancing thing, for my own sake, and so i can avoid last-minute stuff in general, whether it’s me being left with little time to prepare, or having to pull out at the last minute to avoid looking like an idiot on-stage, or feeling like i’m being used as little more than a promotional tool for someone else’s benefit. no hard feelings toward anyone, except for wifflewag. and maybe one or two other people. like sean kingston. apologies to anyone who might be expecting to see me somewhere on friday playing the role of a musical paperweight, but i won’t be there. you wouldn’t have heard much of anything exciting coming from me anyway, aside from occasional organ stabs, so you’re not missing much with me being absent.

another thing worth noting is that i’ve been taken advantage of thanks to the dreaded nice guy reflex more than a few times when it comes to musical matters (wifflewag is only one example), so it’s possible that i sometimes feel like someone is trying to do that sort of thing when it really isn’t the case. but in general i think my instincts are fairly sound. this is just one of those times that i need to put my foot down and do what’s best for me for a change, in spite of the inconvenience it might cause, instead of trying to make everyone else happy and inconveniencing myself. if pulling out of one show gets me saddled with a reputation for being “difficult”, well…maybe that’s not such a bad thing. who wants to be labeled “easy”?

on a lighter note, here is something i wrote quickly on the mandola the day after i got it. i’ve since written other things on it i like more, but what are you gonna do? i’ll tell you what i’m gonna do…i’m gonna find me some shoelace licorice.

done

dig how i apologize for my disheveled appearance only to chop most of my face out of the picture. at least you can kind of see what my hands are doing for a change. also dig how i ran out of time on the camera five seconds or so before the song was over.

the last human sidecar.

something has been gnawing at my brain for a little while, and i decided it might be a good idea to address it in a somewhat public forum.

some time back, i decided i never wanted to play live again. there were a lot of reasons behind it…the two main ones were the overwhelming indifference i was met with about six years ago when no one would give me a show anywhere no matter what i did (only to have that change significantly about a year later when certain people heard my music and decided i was “cool” enough to be given some attention, which put a pretty bad taste in my mouth about the whole thing; if i wasn’t good enough before, i certainly wasn’t good enough now just because there was a slight buzz around me locally), and the simple fact that somewhere along the line live performances stopped being fun for me, and became nerve-wracking.

after a hiatus that lasted a good few years, i thought i would tentatively dip my toes back into the water by playing with other people. not being the singer/frontman/center of attention made for a slightly less stressful situation, and in some cases i was even able to kind of enjoy playing live again. after a while the absurd volume of live music got to be a bit too much for me, but i pulled out the extreme isolation headphones i would normally just use when recording drums or loud electric guitar, and they afforded some much-needed hearing protection.

then the other shoe dropped, and i began to see things in a different light. i won’t name names (ooh! gossip!), but one experience in particular was a good lesson in how being nice and going out of your way to help people out can blow up in your face. someone we’ll call “wifflewag” put a band together for a show that was a pretty big deal, and i became a part of that band. we all had a lot of fun, and i was told that the band was put together based on the personalities of the players more than anything else, so it seemed like we would become a long-term band and get together on a regular basis. that didn’t happen. there were long periods of silence, and then we would get a call from wifflewag out of nowhere, asking us to play a last-minute show. we invariably said yes and, if we were lucky, got to have one or two rehearsals before the show (often it was only one, the night before the show). some of these shows were built up to be big deals as well, only to turn out to be completely unorganized. for one show, the music was advertised to start at 9:00 pm. the opening act didn’t go on-stage until well after 11:00, by which time many people had shown up, waited, seen that nothing at all was happening, and eventually left. by the time we got up on-stage there was barely any audience left, and no one got paid anything. at least that time the sound on-stage was surprisingly good for a change. another show was part of an outdoor music festival, also touted as a big deal. we ended up playing for about six people (that’s not an exaggeration), and the sound on-stage was so abysmal i couldn’t hear a note i played the whole time. good thing i knew the material well enough to play deaf. that show didn’t pay anything either, even my isolation headphones weren’t enough to protect my ears from the ridiculous volume, and i left feeling incredibly angry and thinking i should have stuck to the “no live shows” credo. we were told by wifflewag that there would be some paying gigs after these shitty free shows were out of the way, played to audiences that exceeded single digit numbers. only, as soon as those paying gigs came along, i never got a call again. the band dissolved almost overnight. none of us have played together in anything approaching that incarnation since. wifflewag now has a different band, though we were never told about this or even informed that our services were no longer needed. for all i know, all of the guitar/piano parts i wrote have been given to someone else to play and pass off as their own. i wouldn’t know for sure…after all of that, i have no desire to see the new group live.

after that i cut down on the whole sideman thing, but still had trouble saying no when someone would ask me to play with them. then something happened just recently that involved more last-minute stuff, and made me rethink the whole thing all over again. the details aren’t worth delving into, but i will say that there’s no way i could carve out a comfortable place for myself as a keyboardist in a band i’ve never played with before when the show i’m supposed to be a part of is a few days away and none of the previous rehearsals have included me. practicing to a cd isn’t going to cut it. i also discovered that the show was being billed as a special performance with me, which seemed kind of odd…that makes it sound like i’m either playing a set of my own, or at least doing a lot more than only playing on a few songs. i guess it’s a way to get more people in the door…come see johnny west playing keyboard in a corner. gawk at his funny headphones. ultimately i decided to bow out, lest i have a panic attack on-stage from a lack of adequate preparation time. it felt like the only thing i could do if i didn’t want to be incredibly uncomfortable up there once again. the fact that my sleep is a complete mess once again would only make things more stressful. ’cause, you know, sleep-deprivation totally lessens anxiety. maybe pulling out makes me look bad because my name is on the bill in at least some places, but i was never told that my name was going to be showing up anywhere and i’m tired of being put in stressful situations that could have easily been avoided. i also feel a need to make a more public statement than just telling one band i don’t feel up to playing a show with them after saying i was on board.

basically, the whole sideman thing was fun for a while, but it’s gotten old. everyone seems to think i’m some kind of superhuman session musician who doesn’t need time to prepare like other people do…i can just get up there on-stage and wing it, and it’ll be great. that’s flattering, i guess, but it also feels kind of disrespectful, and there isn’t much truth to it. yes, i can improvise and work without much in the way of rehearsal if i have to, but i’m not a session musician (session musicians get paid, for one thing). i’m not a machine. playing live is an incredibly nerve-wracking experience for me at this point, even under the best of circumstances. i don’t think it’s fair to be put in situations where it really isn’t possible for me to be prepared or comfortable, just so i can help someone else out at my own expense. i’ve done a whole lot of that, and i think maybe it’s time to start thinking about myself for a change. one thing i’ve learned is that i’m not a sideman. i can pretend to be one and it’ll be fairly convincing, but that isn’t really me. and it feels a little strange to be billed as a selling point of a show when really all i am is wallpaper. i’m not sure what people who want to hear my music get out of seeing me play a supporting role to someone else’s music. if i went to a show hoping to catch a particular artist, only to find them doing nothing but playing the sideman role, i would be disappointed. maybe it says something that one of the few genuinely positive experiences i’ve had playing live in the past several years was when i played my own stuff with max at the fm lounge. that was my gig, i did what i wanted to do, and i made sure we had enough rehearsal time beforehand so that we were both comfortable up there. ryan fields also made sure we could actually hear what we were doing on-stage, which made a world of difference.

the whole thing is strange to me, though…no one even wants me for what i can really do. while i’m no virtuoso, i can play just about anything you throw at me, as long as it isn’t a wind instrument or a fretless string instrument, but no one wants me to be a jack-of-all trades. generally i’m only wanted as a keyboard player, i guess because it must be hard to find someone who can throw something together at the last minute and then hammer it out on something with keys. or maybe it’s because if i’m juggling piano, guitar, mandolin, banjo, bass, percussion, melodica, ukulele and other things, and the other musicians just stick with one instrument, i become more interesting than just a cog in the wheel, and divert attention away from them. i’m there as a wild card more than anything, yet i don’t get to go wild. it starts to get frustrating after a while. if people come out to see me, what are they getting that has anything to do with me at all? it’s strange to be used as a promotional tool to bring more people in the door when i’m stuck there on a leash, tied to a stake that’s hammered into the ground, and i have to stay within certain confines to serve the music, which sometimes goes against every musical impulse and instinct that i have. i don’t like being put in a box, or being on musical autopilot. i don’t want to play the same song the same way twice, or even play a song more than once to begin with if i can avoid it. good luck finding someone else who feels the same way. don’t get me wrong—i enjoy having to think in different ways musically, and sometimes it can be rewarding. adam’s a good example…there’s no last-minute bullshit when i play with him, and i’m given free reign to play what i want. hell, if i said i wanted to do a show where we went back and forth playing our own songs, split 50/50, he’d probably be open to that. and doing the unpaid session musician thing in the “studio” is easy enough, because that’s where i’m most comfortable anyway. if i mess up, i can just take another shot at whatever i’m doing until i get it right.

maybe it isn’t even about people thinking i’m some kind of machine…maybe it’s just that some people don’t place that much importance on organization and preparation. who knows. maybe this is just the way things work when it comes to live music. if that’s the case, i can’t mesh with that way of doing things, and it isn’t for me. and maybe some of this sounds bitter, but it isn’t meant to come across that way, and i don’t have any negative feelings about anyone involved, except for maybe wifflewag. i mean, look at the stunning lack of profanity overflow. that should tell you something right there. it’s really flattering that there are people who have wanted me to play with them in one form or another, and in some cases it’s made for a really enjoyable experience, but i feel like i’m at a point now where i’ve gotten just about everything i can get out of it, and now it just feels like going through the motions. i don’t want to turn into a hall & oates song just yet.

(p.s. if you get that reference, marry me)

the point is, the next time i play live, whenever that happens, it’ll be to play my own songs only. i think i need a break from leading an occasional double life as a fake sideman when all i really get for my trouble is temporary hearing loss, a lot of anxiety i could do without, and an overwhelming desire to drink a vanilla milkshake. if there’s one thing i’ve learned, aside from that other thing i learned, it’s that if you give some people an inch, they won’t just take a mile…they’ll take a whole continent. i need to suppress that “nice guy” instinct and kick it in the head until it stops moving for a while. time to do some weight training to strengthen the old legs…

let’s make another music video that takes place in a bowling alley. please.

i don’t like popular music. anyone who knows me fairly well probably knows this. i think just about everything that gets played on commercial radio and music-themed tv stations is insipid, talentless, unmusical, generic, pathetic drivel. i have nothing against anyone who feels differently…that’s just my opinion. it does nothing for me. actually, it makes me angry if i spend any amount of time thinking about how the vast majority of people just lap up this bullshit like starving animals, so i guess at least it’s getting some response out of me. still, i am cursed with a strange musical memory that allows me to remember just about every piece of anything musical i’m exposed to, whether it’s good or not. play me random songs by popular artists, and even though i don’t listen to them, i can probably tell you who most of them are after only hearing a short snippet of a song. i don’t know why this is…it just is.

generally i just try to avoid that which causes me to grow more profane than i already am, and that’s that. but then i heard something that changed my life. you see, sean kingston has just released an album on which he gets personal. he’s not just lifting the music from “stand by me” completely unaltered and singing some horrible shit over it anymore…he’s going deeper. in one song he sings, “sayin’ that i’d look better if i was thinner / don’t you know you should have loved me for my inner?”

what

the FUCK

is that?

seriously. it makes me want to rip my small intestine out and eat it. that’s an insult to music. it’s an insult to my brain. hell, it’s an insult to the universe. even the auto-tune garbage that allows such “artists” who can’t actually sing to make a living takes a back seat to lyrical brilliance like that. if i hadn’t said to hell with trying to build an audience and achieve any kind of success in the music industry long ago, this sort of thing would work me up into a lather and you’d be reading a furious diatribe somewhere between five and ten thousand words long. actually, i wrote something like that maybe six years ago and emailed it to george stroumboulopoulos, just for something to do. i’m sure you’ll be surprised to learn i never got a response.

i know now that there’s no point in fighting battles that can’t be won and screaming into a void. so instead, here’s some psychotic john cale live footage from the early 1980s to combat the musical abomination that is sean kingston, and all those like him. master cale was a huge influence on me back in my angry young days, and for my money had (and still has) one of the best blood-curdling screams in music. and as for the version of “heartbreak hotel”…that’s how you cover a song and make it your own, children. some of the songs are followed by full-band performances from a year later, but i think the solo versions trump them all.

when i was eating grasshoppers off of your chest, a mistake was a well-oiled heel.

i put something “new” up on spyspace just now in place of that new-compressor-testing sketch, just for something to do. i’ll explain the quotation marks around “new” in a moment. but first…who’s a sexy chicken? who’s a sexy chicken? you are! yes you are!

sorry. the picture made me do it.

anyway. the song on spyspace is nothing like anything you should expect to hear on the next album, but rather one of about two hundred songs intended for the gargantuan in-progress project that calls itself THE ANGLE OF BEST DISTANCE. it’s one of several tracks that have been kicking around for a while basically finished but unmixed, so i thought i would mix it already, and maybe by this time next year i’ll finally pull all the disparate threads together, record most of the songs written for the album that haven’t yet been given their due, and emerge with a 3xCD set or something.

this particular song was written at the old house on one of those days when i was going without sleep in order to fix my sleep, at a time when i didn’t yet need to do that very often. hence the opening line, “21 hours and then you drop” (though my day was just beginning). i started playing a repetitive lick on an acoustic guitar, a bunch of words came pouring out, and there was a song. city workers were performing some pointless, menial construction work on the street outside, and a piece of machinery made a strange beeping noise mid-way through the writing process. it sounded somehow dissonant and melodic at the same time, and absurdly appropriate…i wished i had somehow captured it. but it wasn’t to be.

i didn’t finally take a stab at recording the song until february of 2008, while still trying to get my momentum back in the new house. i got the guitar part down, messed around with some vocals, and then decided i wasn’t feeling it. i wasn’t feeling much of anything, really…aside from some tiny songs (also destined for THE ANGLE OF BEST DISTANCE eventually), i didn’t get much of anything substantial done until CHICKEN ANGEL WOMAN shocked me back into productivity in the summer. more than a year after the initial recording, during sessions for the collection of tender love songs that is IF I HAD A QUARTER…, i revisited the song and built on the unfinished bed that was there already…overdubbed a lot of additional singing, added bass, drums and piano, and then realized that all of my vocal multi-tracking and recording guitars in stereo had eaten up most of the available tracks and i didn’t have room left to do much of anything else. i could bounce a bunch of things down to two stereo tracks as a submix and start building up more things on the “wiped” tracks, but i don’t like to do that because it makes mixing the final product a lot more difficult. generally if i can’t say it in 14 tracks, it ain’t worth saying. so the song ultimately still sounds a little unfinished, like it never quite made it to the epic/bombastic place it wanted to go. then again, at just barely three minutes long, it was never going to be very epic no matter what happened. still, i kind of like how the “chorus” is hinted at a few times and then finally appears in full, never to appear again, and some of the vocal gibberish that i initially felt was too goofy to keep ended up winning me over.

really, it’s just a random song that i aim to throw on a ridiculously ambitious, ridiculously bloated album that’s been years in the making (albeit on a very, very sporadic basis) and will probably end up being hailed by pitchforkmedia as my “white album on steroids”, assuming i ever finish it. i still think the singing is kind of dodgy, but i’m too lazy to do anything to fix that, and for some reason i feel like sharing it right now, instead of anything that might actually clue you in to where the next album is going. so there it be. it’s a very quick mix that gets kind of left-heavy near the end, but it’s good enough for now.

woebegone tennis racket.

my sleep is a mess no longer. my soggy brain is stronger. that wasn’t intended to rhyme, but i’ll take it anyway.

i think i’ve got a clearer idea of where i want to go with the next proper album now. got piano/bass/drums and some guide vocals down earlier in the week for a pretty ambitious new song that’s about twelve minutes long. while the meat of it is there already, it needs a lot more work, so yesterday i was chipping away at it. and it just wasn’t coming together. i don’t have a lot of banging-my-head-against-the-wall musical moments…usually i just plow on through and if something doesn’t work i throw something else at the wall until it bounces back and hits me in the face…but this time it wasn’t happening at all. i think it’s one song that isn’t going to be done in a day; it needs time to unfurl, and i need to experiment with a lot of different sounds/decorative touches before i figure out what works where. i gave up on that one and went on to work on something else instead, things clicked in spite of my dour mood, everything dour gradually evaporated as i got sucked into the music, and everyone had sex. the end.

it was interesting to discover that, as nice as that new compressor is, it doesn’t render the one i’ve been using for the past several years obsolete, and there are actually some things i prefer the less sexy compressor on. go figure. but on bass, there’s no contest…the ubk fatso lets me beef it up without things getting too low-end-heavy or tubby. it’s a lovely thing. all that gear is really just a very expensive tool box anyway…you can build yourself a quaint little deck, or you can hammer nails into your feet and scream. it all depends on what you want to do.

i think it’s time to get back to going out of my way to avoid verse/chorus song structures again. it’s been a while since i worked that way for a whole album, and it’s always an interesting challenge to build something that keeps changing until it dies. especially when the song is twelve minutes long. that track is either an anomaly, and the other songs will end up being much shorter, or it’s a harbinger of things to come, in which case there will only be eight songs on the next album because they’ll all be rather gargantuan. all will be revealed in the weeks to come. i can tell you one thing for sure: regardless of how long the songs are, i think the end result is going to be suitably winter-y by the time it’s release-ready, probably sometime in december as previously noted. everything i do seems to come out sounding rather melancholy lately. must be the bryan adams influence creeping in. the song i ended up recording yesterday when i gave up on the epic one is about as close as i get to ballad territory and doesn’t really follow the “avoid repetition at any cost” credo, but the dynamics are kind of odd and it breathes in a strange way. it also threatens to fall apart completely at one point only to put itself back together, and features the return of the bugle, because i couldn’t let things get too comfortable or too pretty. that wouldn’t be right. you know how i said i kept listening to that compressor-testing sketch over and over again and it felt like one of the most perfect things i’d ever done? i take it back. the song i finished yesterday is better. i’m not sure i’ve arrived at the right title for it yet (i kind of like “knee-jerk howl”), but that’ll come in its own time. i’m also realizing that, for better or worse, i’ve developed some sort of “sound” or “style” that’s more or less unconscious at this point, and no matter what i do or how much i mess with it, i seem to end up sounding like myself in the end. i guess that could be a good thing. i mean, it’s better than having everything you do come out sounding like an evil russian spy, or a rabbit with tuberculosis.

all of this is my roundabout way of saying that THE JESUS -SATURATED BOYFRIEND e.p. is being put on the back burner and won’t be showing up in the next few weeks after all. it might not even show up this year. i like that title and won’t just let it languish forever, but right now i think it makes more sense to focus my energy on an album that isn’t made up of musical leftovers. i’m all about the now, you see. so you’ll have to wait a few months before something new appears, but i think it’ll be worth the wait. and if it isn’t, just give me a few more months after that and i’ll have another one ready for you…

just a fool to believe…she’s got no fins.

my sleep is a mess, for the 900th time. soggy brain. ad infinitum. ad nauseum. add sugar. add salt.

but i do have this thing now:

it’s a polaroid spectra 2. a woman in windsor was selling it for ten dollars. that’s a no-brainer for me. film is hard to find and in some cases absurdly expensive, but it is out there, and i did find some, which will probably get here next week sometime. in the meantime, there were about three exposures hiding inside of the camera, for who knows how long. so i took a picture of myself and watched it develop. there’s always been something i liked about polaroid cameras…almost a nostalgic thing. it’s hard to put into words.

been working a bit on songs intended for the JESUS-SATURATED BOYFRIEND ep. if it isn’t finished by the end of the month, i’d expect it should be out there come early october. that is, assuming the songs work well enough together in ep form. it’s shaping up to be one of the longer eps i’ve put together, closer in length to something like BRAND NEW SHINY LIE than, say, the PAVEMENT-HUGGING DADDIES ep. but i guess we’ll see what happens as it gets closer to the finish line.

i think i’ve listened to the finished version of that sketch i put up here (the full version is up at spyspace for the time being) about eighty times by now. it feels like one of the most perfect things i’ve ever done…which makes no sense at all, because it’s a not-overly-well-recorded improvised sketch that i simply padded out to make more like a proper song. must be the soggy brain. i mean, when you start dreaming about amy grant and marc jordan being a couple, leaving the music business behind to make handmade acoustic guitars without any interior bracing, something strange is going on. either way, i think i’m starting to figure out where i want to go with the next proper album. i’m going to shoot for a december release…gotta try to get one more out there before the year is gone.

sun comes up, and it’s not a one-legged seagull at all.

here’s a piece of something new, for all of you whose tongues are blue:

Johnny West – Stone Cold (sketch)

it’s really just a test of a new piece of gear—in this case, a new compressor. yes, my friends…i decided it was finally time to get a good compressor, since after stepping up my eq game it was the only weak link left. thing is, i’m no compression aficionado. not even close. i’m a big fan of “set it and forget it” when it comes to compressors, because there are too many variables for me to work my head around for too many different sources, and too many ways for me to screw it up. this was why i was in no hurry to replace my last compressor; while it was nothing awe-inspiring, it did what i wanted it to do (i.e. tame wild peaks and make things more consistent) without imparting much of any sound or really even sounding that much like compression. for things like drums that needed an extra kick, it was in-the-box compression from the 1680. probably not the best way to go, but it worked for me.

now i have this thing:

now, i know what you’re thinking. you’re thinking, “jesus…you must really like spending money.” but no. generally, i prefer to make googly eyes at money and whisper to it that we will never part. until, of course, we do end up going our separate ways. still, when it comes to musical matters, i can usually find a way to justify parting with money, as i did in this case with the ubk fatso. i mean, it’s pretty. pictures don’t do justice to how nice it looks in the rack (or, if you’re me, on top of other stuff on the desk that you use to organize outboard gear instead of racks). it has nice knees. and man, i wish i had it a year ago. the simplicity of the controls is a big plus for me…no futzing with the ratio, threshold and release. just “more” or “less” compression, and several different kinds of it, all with their own sound. but the “warmth” circuit from the original fatso really does something special of its own. i don’t think it’s a substitute for tape, but it has a wonderful way of taming the harshness that can show up in digital recording, especially when you’re using a fair amount of compression. it’s a subtle thing, but i can hear a world of difference. even this little sketch has a warmth (go figure) that a lot of the things i’ve spent a good deal more time working on don’t always possess. the vocals especially just have this woolly quality to them that i like, and the bass goes deeper than ever before. and it isn’t even a good mix, or even a good recording that i spent any time working on, but rather something i improvised in two minutes because i was really liking what was happening with the “glue” compression setting engaged.

i recorded some acoustic guitar with the microphone several feet away in a bit of an odd position, using a guitar i’ve been neglecting lately. then i added some more noodly/mandolin-ish guitar bits, improvised some singing on top, added some beefed-up bass, and then realized i was starting to like this half-assed sketch quite a bit. it sounds sort of like a cousin to “as it was, as it were, as it is & where it stands” on IF I HAD A QUARTER, but without the bitterness that song was soaked in, and i think i like this one a little more. shortly after recording the sketch, it grew into a proper song. i’m tempted just to use the sketch that’s already there and simply flesh it out instead of re-recording it from scratch, because i like the feel of it. i probably need to re-record most of the singing and push the lead vocal up a bit in the mix, though, and perhaps that bass has just a little too much beef to it.

the point is, i have to work pretty hard to make this compressor sound bad, which is a great thing for a blind fumbler like me. and if i can get sounds out of it i like this much with no effort put into getting things sounding as good as possible, that bodes well for what will happen when serious recording ensues. i’ve had new instruments inspire new songs before, but this is the first time a compressor of all things has ever done that.

that’s the way the quarterback fumbles.

this is almost definitely going to be boring beyond belief to watch, but here you go anyway. this is what i mean when i say that i don’t write songs, so much as they just sort of…happen:

done

i start out with nothing more than a bit of a musical idea and seven words. there is nothing at all in my head when i sit down and start filming. no words. no form. nothing. twenty minutes later, there’s a full page of lyrics and a mostly-finished song. i’ve already changed (nay, improved) a few of the words since the video ended, and the “bridge” section still needs some lyrics, but it’s just about there. in a few days it’ll probably be recorded and on cd. the video isn’t terribly well-filmed (you see my face but not much of my hands), and there’s a lot of fairly uneventful space while i’m writing down the lyrics as they come. there’s one tiny edit where i chopped out about a minute of musical searching so the file would be small enough for wordpress to upload—you’ll know where it is—but aside from that sliver i had to excise, it’s all happening in real-time. of course, i later ended up trying out a different free video editing program just to be able to use a cheesy transition effect for a change to bridge the gap, and ended up finding a way to compress the file size in the process so it wouldn’t take three days to upload. but i still think we can do without that minute or so of aimlessness anyway. as such, the quality is a bit of a step down from the other videos i’ve been posting, but i don’t think it’s too gigantic of a drop. and i don’t plan on making a habit of compressing future videos to save time…it just helps makes life a little simpler sometimes when you’re dealing with a file that’s 20 minutes long and 2GB tall. the program also inserted black bars at the top and bottom of the image for some reason. i don’t buy that it was to preserve the aspect ratio. but it doesn’t bother me enough to do anything about it. so it is what it be.

i don’t think i’ll be filming or posting this sort of thing again anytime soon…i imagine once is more than enough to satisfy the curiosity of anyone, if it doesn’t outright bore them into a catatonic state. at least you get a bit of an idea of what goes on over here when songs are being written. not that this is a particularly worthy song to demonstrate the “process”, or lack thereof…it’s just another one of many that came from wherever it did.

on another topic, apparently i’m at #1 on the CJAM charts instead of #2, in spite of what the online charts say. that’s pretty crazy if you ask me. not that you asked me. it’s always interesting for me to hear what songs DJs will decide to play on the radio…i’ve been hearing a whole lot of “zombies on parade” and “generic love song to play at your wedding”. the first and last tracks have been played a few times as well, but not nearly as much as those other two. it doesn’t bother me that some of the songs i consider to be the better ones sometimes get passed over…like i be sayin’, it’s just interesting to me what people decide to play, whatever the case may be. that “generic love song” was one of the last things i recorded for the album, written in about five minutes and then recorded very quickly in an afternoon, almost as filler, but the more i hear it the more it grows on me. it’s got a weird relaxed almost-sort-of-quasi-soul-soft-rock-ish thing going on that’s not quite like anything else i’ve done, and i like that “sour cream” mid-section with the oohs and slide guitars.

on yet another topic, i think i just discovered my holy grail pair of headphones. they’re going to be a fantastic mixing tool; they don’t flatter poorly-recorded/mixed material at all, but when you give them really good-sounding music, the results are like sex for your ears. and i’m not someone easily impressed by headphones…i’ve got at least six fairly expensive pairs of them, most of which are widely considered recording studio staples, and i’d kick more than half of them out of bed without much provocation. it’s nice when something infuriating (i.e. my trusty old sennheiser headphones—the one pair i really like, so of course they’ve been discontinued—starting to die on me) has the unanticipated side effect of bringing new love into your ears. but more on that some other time…

‘course, just after posting the above, “organ smears” got some airplay. alright! debut action! thanks mike. i think that song and “kamikaze daybreak” are the first times i’ve ever actually used the mandolin in a somewhat conventional way—as a lead/supplemental/frilly thing, instead of playing it more like a guitar and having it drive the whole song, which was the only way i had used it before (as on “peculiar love”, “symbolism therapist”, “waterfall of teeth”, and the list goes on). and what do you know? it’s fun to play fiddly things on the mandolin on top of a song that already exists for a change.

you are my candy, girl…and you’ve got me wanting you.

max came over this afternoon, and love—i mean music—was made. here’s a little bit of what we ended up doing.

done

i recorded about half an hour of video, and a bit more than that on digital tape. that right there is something we improvised out of thin air, followed by a bit of making fun of dan hill and goofing on “letter b”/”let it be”. later on we also goofed on “lean on me”, complete with beat-boxing, and max provided some completely insane singing for a version of “sugar, sugar” unlike any you’ve ever heard before. it was kind of sinister. there was a lot more jazzy improvising in between as well, but i think the song in the above video might have been the best thing to come out of the afternoon, notwithstanding a few ugly piano notes on my part. i like how the music is constantly evolving…it starts off fairly free and a little dissonant, floats around without any firm rhythm or direction for a while, and then rhythm is introduced and things start to take shape, only to keep on shifting until rhythm floats off once again and the whole thing gradually wafts away into nothing. it’s a nice feeling, being able to play with someone where you can collectively improvise without any idea of what you’re going to play or what’s going to happen, not working from any preconceived musical ideas at all, but because you’re listening to one another and always changing and refining what you’re doing based on what the other musician is doing, the results tend to sound more like songs than aimless noodling, while nothing was ever “written” at any point. i might start off following what max is doing on the bass, or he might start off following me, and then we might switch places when the other person introduces a new musical idea, but before long it becomes impossible to tell who’s following who…it’s just an organic process of mutual exploring. and just like back in the days of guys with dicks, listening to what was recorded is like hearing the music for the first time, a completely unpredictable experience, because once we’ve finished playing we’ve already forgotten what we just did, since it was just growing out of the moment anyway. this is a universe and a half away from anything i was doing with the band, though, and i’d feel wrong trying to sing on top of the music. it just seems like it should stay mostly instrumental to me. it’s also fun to concentrate on one instrument, challenging myself to see what i can wring out of it in any given situation. i guess this is my roundabout way of saying, “playing with max arouses me.” and boy, it sure do.

we came full circle just as i ran out of time on the camcorder, with a mantra-like improvisation featuring both of us singing and making odd noises, complete with max speaking ethnic-sounding nonsense in a stephen hawking voice and some unexpected but somehow perfectly-timed harmonies between the two of us. it was epic, but we need to overdub some additional vocal nonsense before it’s ready to leave the womb; we weren’t using any vocal mics, and so our voices aren’t as present in the mix as they should be.

again, apologies for the crummy cinematography. i ended up cutting max’s head off in an attempt at getting both of us in the frame, and trying to work around the microphones didn’t make it much easier. next time i’ll make sure both of our faces can be seen, or else i’ll hire someone else to work the camera and provide some movement and a generally more interesting visual representation of whatever we’re doing musically. but i’m digging being able to record videos of stuff like this, and then putting it up here. while the sound of the recording proper is infinitely better than this, the little video camera does a surprisingly good job with the audio. if you’ve got a decent pair of headphones or computer speakers with a good amount of dynamic range, the bass and piano should both come through pretty nicely. you don’t quite get all the nuances (some of the bass harmonics don’t come off as well as they do on the recording, for instance), but you don’t come here for nuance anyway…you come here for the steak and baked potatoes.

i don’t know if anyone around here (or elsewhere) would be into listening to this sort of thing, but i’m tempted to put together a cd of instrumental improvisations like this with max. a few more jam sessions and there might be enough for a full-length album. as much fun as it would be to add all kinds of other sounds and instruments to the mix, i kind of like the way things sound with just bass and piano. there’s lots of space. i like space. it tastes like…spaciousness. it feels like we can do more with just the two of us than we could if other musicians were involved. and if we played at a place like, say, taloola, i’d have half a mind to throw out any existing songs of my own and just unleash an hour of heavily-improvised instrumental explorations along the lines of what’s in that video (or the first eight minutes of it anyway). i don’t know. something to stew on. i can tell you right now that if we do end up playing, i’m renting a real upright piano for the occasion, similar to my own. upright piano, upright bass, and a can of mace. who could ask for anything more?

in other news, CREATIVE NIGHTMARES is on the CJAM charts, much higher than i thought it would be, right here. madness, i tell you. thanks, as always, to everyone at CJAM for all of the support…particularly to adam fox, cassie caverhill, adam peltier, jan blondin, mike whaley, jon nehmetallah, max marshall, nicole markham, cristina naccarato, jim meloche, eric arner, dale jacobs, j. kyle lebel, murad erzinclioglu…and if there’s anyone else who’s been playing my stuff and i just don’t know about it, thanks to you too. i had more booklets/inserts made and am in the process of re-building my stockpile of cds, because they seem to be going a lot faster than usual. must be the fact that my face is on the cover for a change.

nothing involving cheetos can ever be pointless.

i was just on CJAM talking about the new album and general johnny things. it was a little last-minute, so i couldn’t warn y’all beforehand…but you can check it out here if you like. i’m about fifteen minutes or so in, though i think the interview with the drummer from fiftywatthead is well worth listening to as well. as for me, my brain was a little soggy, but i think it’s safe to say i was full of scintillating information and dirty jokes. only not. thanks to adam for chatting with me on the phone. that’s the first time i’ve ever done a radio interview via telephone. dig the lisp! i’ve always been a sucker for that lo-fi telephone sound, and occasionally used it as a vocal effect in the old days (most notably on “ebeneezer scrooge” on DON’T TALK LIKE A BABY ten years ago). i need to pull that sound out again one of these days.

the CJAM mp3 archives seem to be down at the moment, so if the above link doesn’t work, and/or if you just want to hear my bit, you can do so right here:

CJAM NIMBY snippet from August 25, 2009

i’ve gone through at least 130 copies of the new cd already, in less than two weeks. that’s insane. i’m already close to needing more booklets/inserts/jewel cases. AN ABSENCE OF SWAY and IF I HAD A QUARTER… are pretty close to being “out of print”, because i’m more or less out of inserts for them and need to get them re-printed as well. i guess those subliminal messages i planted in the songs have really kicked in. huzzah!

on a random note, i think i need to put together a song called “the rise & fall of steven seagal”. it’ll be at once uplifting and heartbreaking. and a psychobilly polka.